"Connie--well actually its Jess",haystacks and a new hen house

Janet called this afternoon when I was clearing the hen runs; a new dog had just been delivered to the pet rescue centre and she wanted me to see it with her. The dog turned out to be a small terrier cross bitch around 10 months old, and I thought she was quite charming. She was friendly with William (who had come along for the ride), fairly placid with the cats in the cattery and walked easily on her lead. I thought she was sweet and I wasn't surprised when Janet drove home with her calmly sat in the back seat.Her kennel name was fudge but I kind of thought she looked like a Connie.............I think the name might actually stick.

I finally got hold of the lady who owns the substantial hen house on the gop and after a bit of negotiation I knocked her down from 50£ to 30£, which I think was a bargain. The coop is worth at least 75£ so I was pretty pleased. When the new hen house/chicken house comes tomorrow I shall have 6 poultry coops up and running. A hen monopoly!

Cleared out the large coop this morning and fully disinfected it against red mite, which is the most disgusting of jobs on earth. I have raked all the dead grass from the enclosure too (the hens remove all the unwanted grass and straw from the pasture) and I couldn't believe how much stuff they can shift

Chris is in Swansea all day today, so won't be back until late, Connie now is called Jess, which sounds just right

Fame

Susan, "our" dog breeder sent this picture of the dogs to "Dog world Newspaper" and they have printed it!

fame at last

http://www.dogworld.co.uk/My-breeds

George walks!

In an effort to balance the blog stories (oh no not another tale of doggy-life) I wanted to put a friend's adorable boy pic on line as it were. Love the t shirt George Bevan

Sicko Moles

First it was red mite,then cabbage whites and last week it was the gale force winds that threatened the allotment. Today we have "attack of the moles". Long mole runs zigzag across the chicken runs and more importantly they infiltrate the vegetable patches, up ending my sown broad beans and shallots.

One of the neighbours is kindly getting me some traps, and after watching the delightful Harry Dodson in the The Wartime Kitchen Garden I think I can actually use them.(mind you the above picture IS kinda cute),on a happier note:
Stanley's hen house is being delivered on Friday, so perhaps I can buy his three or four concubines on Saturday.

Months and months after it was released Theatre Clwyd has finally shown the film Sicko (2007) tonight.and although I find Michael Moore films rather too contrived and ever so flippant, his review of the American health care system is well worth seeing. In an entertaining and sobering 2 hours Moore explores the US's efforts to establish free health and traces it's failure to President Richard Nixon's deceptive support of the then-emerging HMOs pursuing huge profits and subsequent pressures for Congress to sacrifice sound health care in favor of corporate profit.
The film ends with three emergency service hero's of the 9/11 attacks who cannot afford the health care costs in the United States, being ferried over to Cuba to receive first class health care they only dreamed about getting at home. Their reactions to the kindness and free-at-the-point -of -delivery care ,I found , incredibly moving.

Moore's side-swipe at Hilary Clinton's u turn at her initial health care reforms during her husband's presidency must be incredibly painful given her efforts to enter the White house at this time, and as a Brit with little knowledge of American dirty politics I found the whole thing extremely interesting! However it was an articulate and erudite Tony Benn, who stole the show, with a moving speech on the virtues of the National Health Service.I could listen to him talk all night long.

A good 9/10

Enjoy Rugby in the capital of love

very very funny!
typically French

Village Gossip and more allotment news

With the garden flowers in vases on the kitchen windowsill the cottage feels more spring-like than winter-ish. The helleborus- Christmas roses, miniature narcissi and flowers from the bergenia are all slightly early this year which is a welcome change from the dull greens and browns of February.

I got a spurt on this morning and planted the rest of my shallots, 3 rows of onion sets, 3 rows of parsnips and radish. My broad beans are already in, and second planting shall be done next week as will be the first of my potatoes. My rhubarb crowns (right) have shot up in a week , so I am now feeling that things are moving along nicely.

Talk in the post office this morning has been centred around the arrival of the air ambulance on Gop hill Sunday morning. Apparently a man had been caught ill whilst walking his dogs and sadly did not survive a suspected heart attack. I was shocked to hear that this poor man was an old acquaintance of mine from the CB days of the 1980's.I had no idea that he lived in the same village. Made me feel rather old..........

I just don't do mornings

I don't do mornings well...I do them, we all do, but I am not happy until I have a period of silence, a good cup of coffee and time and space in which to wake up.

Chris knows this, after most of a decade, he bloody well should do, but time and time and time again he insists to challenge my early day blues!

This morning is a case in point. He gets up at 5.30am, smile on face,skip in step acting like a wimple wearing Connie Fisher from the Sound of Music. Cupboards are banged as clothes are searched for,drawers are dragged open and finally I managed to silently crawl back under the duvet and get back to sleep. Then we had a whisper in the ear to tell me that he had a nightmare overnight! a few minutes later we had another whisper to tell me that he had been shortlisted for some funding for a research study.............I managed to grumble a weak "leave me alone" before falling again back to sleep. Minutes later after Chris had dragged the dogs out for their early morning walk, I was woken again with the hysterical clatter of feet on the stairs, as Meg,William and George raced to get into bed with me. Meg is obsessed with getting as close as is humanly possible to me at every given moment, so groggy and getting ever-so-irritated,I woke again with a small hairy arse poking into my face. William not to be out done promptly sat on the top of us, whilst George proceeded to tap dance noisily on the hard boards of the bedroom floor, waiting to be lifted onto the bed.

7am! I gave up with any hope of dozing, so I got up to sort the cackling hens out before taking Chris to the station in Prestatyn (he was still chattering away about something as I drove away)

Now it is 9.30. First coffee is being downed, the house is silent and I can charge up for the day ahead. Bliss..........

angels?

The comments by Lord Manscroft recently on the "morals" of the nurses that cared for him in Bath's general Hospital was an interesting comment on modern nursing today. He didn't pull his punches by saying:-

The nurses that looked after me were mostly grubby. We're talking about dirty fingernails, slipshod, lazy."
The hospital said it had received no complaint but would be contacting Lord Mancroft to discuss the matter.
During the debate on NHS patient care Lord Mancroft went on to say: "It's a miracle I'm still alive. But worst of all my Lords they were drunken and promiscuous."
"How do I know that? Because if you're a patient and you're lying in a bed, and you're being nursed from either side, they talk across you as if you're not there.
"So I know exactly what they got up to the night before, and how much they drank, and I know exactly what they were planning to do the next night, and I can tell you, it's pretty horrifying."

I know these comments are subjective and emotive, but as an example how "unprofessional" many nurses can be nowadays, it is, I am afraid rather accurate. I won't bang on for the possible reasons for all this: the lack of leadership perhaps , the lowering of admission criteria to nurse training maybe? a change of ward discipline, it is possible.The whole thing saddens me greatly.

Conversely, I have been working today, and have done so with a tight knit, professional group of staff that have made a particularly stressful shift a lot easier than it might have been. "My" spinal patient suddenly deteriorated today and sadly died this afternoon .As usual ( as it has been for the past 7 weeks or so) I have been allocated to care for him and although it was incredibly sad, to be able to "finish" his care and support his family through his death was a privilege and very satisfying.

When nurses work well together, professionally and with skill, the nurses themselves do not always celebrate the fact. I made a point of thanking each member of the team for their individual contribution, not only for my patient, but for me personally and this personal and professional "pats-on-the-back" are vital, I think, to develop staff awareness and pride.

Perhaps the nurses caring for Lord Manscroft have lost a little of the "pride" in their own profession?, and instead of arguing that these nurses don't exist, or shouting for these staff to be expelled from the register, perhaps the senior nurses supervising these nurses should look to themselves on how to professionalise nursing as a whole- a tighter rein on things is perhaps a start,.........